Three.

VIDEO GAMES.

I catch a glimpse of my father being bundled into an unmarked van parked across the baseball field. I would recognize him anywhere. He hammers on the back window, but the van is already through the gates and disappearing into the smoking rubble of Tokyo. I leap onto our patrol stratobike, take off my baseball cap and rest it on the console. Zizzi flashes me a peppermint smile and off we zoom. Lavender clouds slide by. I train my gun on a chillipepper schoolboy, but for once things are exactly as they appear. The sunroof of a midnight Cadillac flips open, and out pops a lobstermobsterBang! Shell and claws everywhere. I drill the rear window and the vehicle explodes in paintbox flames. The van swerves down the road to the airport. In the underpass an ambulance cuts us up a scalpel-slashing medic leaps on to our bonnet, eyeballs afroth with plagueBang! In the nuts! Bang Bang! Vomit on the bonnetBang! The mutant staggers, but refuses to dieBang! Blasted through a billboard. Reload Reload. 'You're my top gun,' croons Zizzi. We get to the airport just in time to see my father dragged into a vanilla Cessna aircraft. I daren't shoot his kidnappers at this range in case I miss. A mighty chokmakopter eclipses the sun, and zombie spawn abseil to earth. I pulp dozens in midair, but the semolina army of death sludges up too quickly. 'Zax, honey!' says Zizzi. 'Megaweapon in McDonald's!' I fire the golden arches and collect the twenty-third-century rapid-fire bazooka. It purrs as I scythe soon the runway is a spill of twitching limbs. I pepper the chokmakopter until it nosedives into the fuel trucks. Octane fuchsia explosions light the world. 'Way to go, Zax! Now to follow your father's abductors to their laboratory!' We soar in pursuit of the Cessna I click my trigger to skip the preamble. We enter the underworld. The sewers are quiet. Too quiet. A gigahydra erupts, nine heads dripping lime slime from nine lassooing necksBang! Cleft like a cabbage. Reload Reload. But from the stump two new heads are born. 'Deep-fry the freak!' screams Zizzi, so I aim at the beast's trunk and activate my flamethrower. Whoooooorrrsh Whoooooorrrsh! It shrivels away in my swathe of unlooping strawberry fire. A lily-white Lilith oneBang! and she's history. A swarm of cyberwasps bangabangabanga bangabangabanga reload reload. My hand is killing me. The tunnel narrows to a dead end. An unseen iron door creaks open a scientist in silhouette. 'My son! You found me! At long last!' I relax and flex my gun hand. 'You are in time' he rips off his false beard, his briefcase morphs into a grenade launcher 'to die!' The gritty gloom swarms with intelligent missiles, homing in on my body heat. Bangabangabanga Bangabangabanga! I miss most of them, and can't even take aim at the impostor. Scarlet pixels of life-blood splatter the screen. 'Zax,' begs my sister, 'don't leave me here insert a coin to continue. Honey, don't quit now.'

'Honey,' mimics a voice over my shoulder, 'don't quit now!' I replace my gun and turn around to face my spectator and his slow applause. My first thought is that he is way too cool to be hanging out in games centres. Older than me, a sleek ponytail, an earring. Pop star good looks. 'First time in the underworld, right?' His real voice is tailored Tokyoite.

I nod. The real world fades in.

'It was the same for me, my first time in the underworld.'

Laser zaps, vampire howls, coin rattles, cyclical video game music. 'Oh.'

You see your father, so you let your guard down. A dirty trick! Next time, shoot the egghead on sight. It takes about nine shots to kill him.'

'Well. Sorry I died and spoilt your fun.'

The most casual of shrugs. 'You're doomed from the first coin. You pay to postpone the ending, but the video game will always win in the long run.'

My last half-Marlboro died in the ashtray. 'Very deep.'

'Actually, I was waiting for my date in the pool hall upstairs. Looks like she's playing the be-late-keep-him-on-tenterhooks game. So I came down to make sure she hadn't fucked up and was waiting outside. I saw you, wrapped up in Zax Omega and Red Plague Moon Zax Omega and Red Plague Moon, and had to stay to watch. Did you know your tongue pokes out when you concentrate?'

'No.'

'It's a two-player game, really. It even took me a fortnight to polish it off.'

'That must have cost you a fortune.'

'No. My father owns a man who owns a distributor.'

No reply presents itself. 'Well, hope your date shows up soon.' 'The bitch had better. Or I'll flay her alive.'

Saturday night in Shibuya bubbles and sweats. One week since my sleepless night, I decided to come exploring. The pleasure quarter is so hot, one more struck match could ignite the place. Uncle Bank took me out last year to his bar in Kagoshima, but that is nothing compared to this. Neither are the prices. Drones drink in squadrons, ties loose, collars undone. She-drones, office uniforms stuffed into shoulder bags. I damn drones too much, considering I am one now. But I only pretend to be one. Maybe we all start out that way. Same as Mr Aoyama. Couples on dates. Americans and beautiful women in moonglasses. I bet the waitress with the perfect neck has a whole phone book of boyfriends like my spectator in the games centre. A giant DRINK COCA-COLA DRINK COCA-COLA cascade, magma maroons and holy whites. I suck a champagne bomb and walk on. Hostesses wave geriatric company presidents into taxis. In an amber-lit restaurant everyone knows one another. A giant Mongol warrior scooters past, flanked by bunny girls handing out leaflets advertising a new shopping complex somewhere. Girls in cellophane waistcoats, panties and tights sit in glass booths outside clubs, offering chit-chat and ten-per-cent-off coupons. I imagine scything through the crowds with the twenty-third-century megaweapon. The clouds are candy-coloured from the lights and lasers. Outside Aphrodite's Soapworld, a bouncer runs through the girls pinned up on the board. 'Number one is Russian classy, accommodating. Two, Filipina attentive, well trained. The French girl well, need I say more. The Brazilian, dark chocolate, plenty of bite. Number five, English, white chocolate. Six is German, home of the wiener. Not an ounce of flab on the Koreans. Number eight are our exotic black twins, and number nine ah, number nine is beyond the grasp of ordinary mortals-' He catches me gawping and cackles. 'Come back in a decade or so, sonny, with your summer bonus.' I wander past an electronics shop, and on TV see someone familiar walking past an electronics shop. He stops, examines the TV, amazed and semi-appalled at how he must appear to other people. I buy a new pack of Marlboro. As I pass by the red lanterns of a noodle shop and smell the kitchen vapours pumped out, I suddenly remember how hungry I am. I peer through the window it looks greasy enough to be affordable, even for me. I slide open the door and enter through the strings of beads. A steamy hole with a roaring kitchen. I order fried tofu noodles with green onions and sit by the window, watching the crowds wash by. My noodles arrive. I help myself to a glass of iced water. Happy twentieth birthday, Eiji Miyake. Buntaro handed me a fine crop of cards this evening one from each of my four aunts. The fifth envelope was another one from the ministry of unwelcome letters, still operating its Get Miyake campaign. I light up a Marlboro and take out the letter again to reread, trying to figure out whether it is a step forward, backward or sideward. cascade, magma maroons and holy whites. I suck a champagne bomb and walk on. Hostesses wave geriatric company presidents into taxis. In an amber-lit restaurant everyone knows one another. A giant Mongol warrior scooters past, flanked by bunny girls handing out leaflets advertising a new shopping complex somewhere. Girls in cellophane waistcoats, panties and tights sit in glass booths outside clubs, offering chit-chat and ten-per-cent-off coupons. I imagine scything through the crowds with the twenty-third-century megaweapon. The clouds are candy-coloured from the lights and lasers. Outside Aphrodite's Soapworld, a bouncer runs through the girls pinned up on the board. 'Number one is Russian classy, accommodating. Two, Filipina attentive, well trained. The French girl well, need I say more. The Brazilian, dark chocolate, plenty of bite. Number five, English, white chocolate. Six is German, home of the wiener. Not an ounce of flab on the Koreans. Number eight are our exotic black twins, and number nine ah, number nine is beyond the grasp of ordinary mortals-' He catches me gawping and cackles. 'Come back in a decade or so, sonny, with your summer bonus.' I wander past an electronics shop, and on TV see someone familiar walking past an electronics shop. He stops, examines the TV, amazed and semi-appalled at how he must appear to other people. I buy a new pack of Marlboro. As I pass by the red lanterns of a noodle shop and smell the kitchen vapours pumped out, I suddenly remember how hungry I am. I peer through the window it looks greasy enough to be affordable, even for me. I slide open the door and enter through the strings of beads. A steamy hole with a roaring kitchen. I order fried tofu noodles with green onions and sit by the window, watching the crowds wash by. My noodles arrive. I help myself to a glass of iced water. Happy twentieth birthday, Eiji Miyake. Buntaro handed me a fine crop of cards this evening one from each of my four aunts. The fifth envelope was another one from the ministry of unwelcome letters, still operating its Get Miyake campaign. I light up a Marlboro and take out the letter again to reread, trying to figure out whether it is a step forward, backward or sideward.

Tokyo8 SeptemberEiji Miyake,I am your father's wife. His first first wife, his wife, his real real wife, his wife, his only only wife. Well, well. My informant at Osugi & Bosugi tells me you have been trying to contact my husband. How dare you? Was your upbringing so primitive you were never taught wife. Well, well. My informant at Osugi & Bosugi tells me you have been trying to contact my husband. How dare you? Was your upbringing so primitive you were never taught shame shame? Yet somehow I always suspected this day would come. So, you have learned of your father's influential status and are seeking quick cash. Blackmail is an ugly word, done by ugly people. But blackmail blackmail demands panache and pliable victims. You possess demands panache and pliable victims. You possess neither neither. Presumably, you believe you are clever, but in Tokyo you are a greedy boy from the countryside with a mind mired in manure manure. I will will protect my daughters and my husband. We have paid enough, protect my daughters and my husband. We have paid enough, more more than enough, for what your mother did. Perhaps this is than enough, for what your mother did. Perhaps this is her her idea? She is a idea? She is a leech leech. You are a boil boil. My message to you is simple: if you dare dare to attempt to intimidate my husband, to show your face to any of our family, or to request a single yen, then, as a boil, you will be to attempt to intimidate my husband, to show your face to any of our family, or to request a single yen, then, as a boil, you will be lanced lanced.

I drain the puddle of soup from my noodles. A dragon chases its tail around the world. So. For my coming-of-age birthday I also received a paranoid stepmother who underlines too much, and two or more stepsisters. Unfortunately the letter itself won't help me find my father it was unsigned, unaddressed, and posted in the northern ward of Tokyo, which narrows down the search to about three million people, assuming it was even written there. My stepmother is no fool. Her negative attitude is yet another hurdle. On the other hand, to be pushed away, I have to be touched. Also, my father didn't write the letter himself so at worst, this means he still isn't sure about meeting me. At best, it means he hasn't actually been told I am trying to contact him. It is at this moment that I realize I don't have my baseball cap. This is the worst unbirthday present I could receive. That cap was a present from Anju. I think back I had it in the games centre just now. I leave, and backtrack through the currents of pleasure seekers.

Zax Omega and Red Plague Moon is still plying for trade, but my baseball cap has gone. I search the rows of students pummelling the offspring of is still plying for trade, but my baseball cap has gone. I search the rows of students pummelling the offspring of Street Fighter Street Fighter, a crowd of kids gathered around 2084 2084; the booths of girls digitalizing their faces with those of the famous; the alleys of salarymen playing mah-jong with video stripstresses. Weird. All these people like my mother paying counsellors and clinics to reattach them to reality: all these people like me paying Sony and Sega to reattach us to unreality. I identify the jowly supervisor by the way he jangles his keys. I have to yell into his ear. I smell the wax. 'Anyone handed in a cap?'

'Wha'?'

'I left a baseball cap here, thirty minutes ago.'

'Why?'

'I forgot it!'

Please wait transaction being processed. 'You forgot why you left it?'

'Never mind.'

I remember my spectator. In the upstairs pool room, he said. I find the back stairs and go up. The sudden quietness and gloom are subaquatic. Three rows by six of ocean-blue tables. I see him on the far side, playing alone, and on his head is my baseball cap. His ponytail is fed through the strap-gap. He pockets a ball, looks up, and gestures me over. 'I figured you'd be back. That's why I didn't chase you. Want to win it off my head?'

'I'd rather you just took it off your head.'

'Where's the fun in that?'

'There isn't any. But it is my cap.'

He sizes me up. 'True.' He presents my cap with a courtier flourish. 'No offence meant. I'm not really myself tonight.'

'No worries. Thanks for rescuing my cap.'

He smiles an honest smile. 'You're welcome.'

My move. 'So, uh, how late is she now?'

'When does "late" become "stood up"?'

'I dunno. Ninety minutes?'

'Then the bitch has well and truly stood me up. And I had to pay for this table until ten.' He gestures with his cue. 'Play a few frames, if you're not busy.'

'I'm unbusy. But I'm too broke to bet.'

'Can you afford one cigarette per game?'

I am sort of flattered that he takes me seriously enough to offer me a game of pool. All I have had in the way of company since I got to Tokyo has been Cat, Cockroach and Suga. 'Okay.'

Yuzu Daimon is a final-year law student, a native of Tokyo, and the finest pool player I have ever met. He is brilliant, truly. I watched The Hustler The Hustler last week. Daimon could whip the Paul Newman character into coffee froth. He lets me win a couple of frames out of politeness, but by ten o'clock he's mopped up seven more in U-turn-spinning, jump-shotting, unerring style. We hand in the cues and sit down to smoke our winnings. My plastic lighter is buggered: a flame flicks from Daimon's thumb. It is a beautiful object. 'Platinum,' says Daimon. last week. Daimon could whip the Paul Newman character into coffee froth. He lets me win a couple of frames out of politeness, but by ten o'clock he's mopped up seven more in U-turn-spinning, jump-shotting, unerring style. We hand in the cues and sit down to smoke our winnings. My plastic lighter is buggered: a flame flicks from Daimon's thumb. It is a beautiful object. 'Platinum,' says Daimon.

'Must be worth a fortune.'

'It was my twentieth birthday present. You should practise more.' Daimon nods at the table. 'You have a good eye.'

'You sound like my sports teacher at high school.'

'Oh, please. Say, Miyake, I've decided Saturday owes me compensation for being stood up. What say we go to a bar and find a pair of girls.'

'Uh, thanks. I'd better pass.'

'Your girlfriend will never find out. Tokyo's too big.'

'No, it's nothing that-'

'So you don't have a woman waiting anywhere?'

'Not a non-imaginary one, no, but-'

'You're trying to tell me you're gay?'

'Not as far as I know, no, but-'

'Then you took a vow of celibacy? You're a member of a cult?'

I show him the contents of my wallet.

'So? I'm offering to foot the bill.'

'I can't scav off you. You already paid for the table.'

'You won't be scavving off me. I told you, I'm going to be a lawyer. Lawyers never spend their own money. My father has a hospitality account of a quarter of a million yen to get through, or his department will face a budgetary reassessment. So you see, by refusing you put our family in a difficult position.'

That's quite a lot of money. 'Every year?'

Daimon sees I am serious, and laughs. 'Every month month, dolt!'

'Scavving off your father is even worse than scavving off you.'

'Look, Miyake, I'm only talking about a couple of beers. Five at most. I'm not trying to buy your soul. C'mon. When's your birthday?'

'Next month,' I lie.

'Then consider it a premature birthday present.'

Santa Claus works behind the bar, Rudolf the Red-nosed Reindeer emerges from the toilets holding a mop, and elves in floppy hats wait on the tables. I watch snowflakes dance on the ceiling, smoking a Marlboro lit by the Virgin Mary. Yuzu Daimon drums along to psychedelic Christmas carols. 'It's called the Merry Christmas Bar.'

'But it's September ninth.'

'It's December twenty-fifth every night, in here. It is what we call a chick magnet.'

'I might be being naive, but could your girlfriend have just been held up?'

'You are being whatever lies beyond naive. What decade is this Yakushima place trapped in? The bitch stood me up. I know it. We had an arrangement. If she wanted to be there, she would have been, and I am now as single as a newborn babe, and she is jet-trash to me. Jet-trash. And don't turn around right now, but I believe our feminine solace has just arrived. Over in the nook between the fireplace and the tree. The one in the coffee leather, the other in the cherry velvet.'

'They look like models.'

'Model whats?'

'They wouldn't look at me twice. Once.'

'I said I'll buy your drinks, not massage your ego.'

'I mean it.'

'Crap.'

'Look at how I'm dressed.'

'We'll say you work as a roadie.'

'I'm not even smart enough to be a roadie.'

'We'll say you work as a roadie for Metallica.'

'But we've never met them.'

Daimon buries his face in his hands and chuckles. 'Ah, Miyake, Miyake. What do you think bars are for? Do you think all these people enjoy paying exorbitant prices for pissy cocktails? Finish your beer. We need whisky to penetrate the enemy interior. No more buts! Look at the one in velvet. Imagine yourself untying the cords of that bodice thing she's wearing with your front teeth. A simple yes or no will do: do you want her?'

'Who wouldn't? But-'

'Santa! Santa! Two double Kilmagoons! On the rocks!'

'So, after the rape,' Daimon says in a loud voice as we take the adjacent table, 'their world is bulldozed. Razed. She stops eating. She rips out the telephone. The only thing she shows any interest in is her dead son's video games. When my friend leaves home for work in the mornings she is already there, hunched over the pistol, wasting men on the sixteen-inch Sony. When he gets back, she hasn't moved a muscle. Kitchen pots still on the table she doesn't care. Bangabangabang! Reload Bangabangabang! Reload. Back in the real world, the police drop the case sexual assault during a night on the bare mountain? Forget it. Most men just can't begin to understand what an experience like that... I despair of our sex, sometimes, Miyake. So. Nine months pass this way. She doesn't leave the house once. Not a single time. He is going frantic with worry you remember what a mess he was when you got back from your Beatles reunion gig. Finally he asks a psychiatrist for advice. Somehow, the shrink concludes, she has to be reintegrated into society or risk sinking into a state of self-willed autism. Now, they originally met in their university orchestra she was a xylophonist, he was a trombonist. So he buys two tickets for Pictures at an Exhibition Pictures at an Exhibition, and day by day erodes her resistance until she agrees to come. Cigarette?'

I could swear there was an ashtray when we sat down.

'Excuse me?' Daimon leans over to Coffee. 'May I?'

'Sure.'

'Thanks so much. The night of the concert, she takes sedatives, they get dressed up, have a candlelit dinner somewhere high up, and take their seats in the front row. The trumpet starts. You know...' Daimon hums the opening bars. 'And she freezes. Her eyes are ice ice. Her fingernails sink into his thigh until they draw blood. She starts trembling. Forget the embarrassment, he has to get her out of there before she gets hysterical. Out in the foyer she tells him. The cymbal clasher in the orchestra she swears on her ancestor's tomb that he was the man who raped her.'

I notice that Coffee and Velvet are tuned in.

'I know what you're thinking. Why not go to the cops? Nine cases out of ten, the judge tells the woman she was asking for it by wearing her skirt too high, and the rapist gets away with signing an apology form. She tells him that unless he avenges her honour she'll throw herself from the top of the Tokyo Hilton. Now. You met him. He's no mug. He does his homework, and gets an unregistered gun with a silencer, surgical gloves. One evening, while the orchestra are performing Beethoven's Fifth, he breaks into the cymbalist's apartment he lives alone with his pet crystals. What he finds backs up his wife's story. Internet porn print-outs, S&M gear, manacles hanging from the ceiling, a seriously worn and torn inflatable Marilyn Monroe. He hides under the bed. After midnight the cymbalist gets back, listens to his answering machine, has a shower, and gets into bed. My friend has a sense of the dramatic. "Even a monster should check under his mattress." Bangabangabanga! Bangabangabanga!'

'Quite a story.'

'Not over yet. My damn lighter isn't working. One moment...' Daimon leans over to Coffee, who is already opening her designer handbag. 'I'm terribly sorry to trouble you thanks so much.' She even lights it for him, and then one for me. I nod shyly. 'Revenge is the purest medicine. You probably remember the local rags "Who Banged the Cymbal?" but a successful murder is only a question of planning, and the police have no clues. His wife recovers in a matter of days days. She starts teaching at her school for the blind again. Chucks out the video games. And come spring, when the Saito Kinen Orchestra go to Yokohama, this time she she insists that they buy front-row tickets. Like before, but happier. He can live with his conscience he only dispensed the same natural justice as the state would have done if it had sharper cops. They get dressed up, have the candlelit dinner somewhere high up, and take their seats in the front row. The string section start in and she freezes. Her eyes are insists that they buy front-row tickets. Like before, but happier. He can live with his conscience he only dispensed the same natural justice as the state would have done if it had sharper cops. They get dressed up, have the candlelit dinner somewhere high up, and take their seats in the front row. The string section start in and she freezes. Her eyes are ice ice. Her breathing changes. He thinks she's having some sort of attack, and manages to get her out into the lobby. "What?" he asks. "The second cellist! It's him! The man who raped me!" "What ? How about the cymbal clasher I killed last year?" She shakes her head like he's crazy. "What are you talking about? The second cellist is the rapist, I swear on my ancestor's grave, and if you don't avenge my honour I'll electrocute myself.' ? How about the cymbal clasher I killed last year?" She shakes her head like he's crazy. "What are you talking about? The second cellist is the rapist, I swear on my ancestor's grave, and if you don't avenge my honour I'll electrocute myself.'

'Unbelievable!' gasps Coffee. 'Like, what did he do next?'

Daimon rotates, Coffee crosses her legs, and we become a foursome. 'Went to the cops. Confessed to the cymbal player's murder. By the time he was brought to trial, his wife had accused nine different men of raping her, including the minister for fish.'

Velvet is aghast. 'Did all that really happen?'

'I swear' Daimon blows a wobbly smoke ring 'every word is true.'